Friday, March 07, 2008

37Signals -- excellence in Internet customer relations

We discuss progress in storage, electronics and communication, and it is common knowledge that all three technologies are improving exponentially. Everyone speaks of "Moore's Law." (But few read the short article that gave rise to the term).

What do companies do when better technology cuts their costs? Most grin and watch their profit margin rise. But, another alternative is to create good will by passing some of the savings on to customers.

When I logged on to my 37Signals Basecamp site yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see this message:

More storage space for the same price!

Last night we increased file storage space for Personal through Premium plans. Personal plans now get 1 GB (up from 250 MB), Basic plans now get 3GB (up from 500 MB), Plus plans now get 10 GB (up from 3 GB), and Premium plans now get 20 GB (up from 10 GB). Max plans remain at 50 GB for now, but if enough people start to hit that limit we will increase that limit as well. We hope you find the increased storage space useful and thanks again for being our customers!

That, combined with their forthright handling of a recent service interruption, is a case study in good customer relations!

Which do you feel has done a better job of passing technology improvements along to the consumer -- PC companies or telephone companies?

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